


Baby I love you, why don't you tell me your name?

by Shulik



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Character of Color, F/M, Female Character of Color, Gen, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-14
Updated: 2013-01-14
Packaged: 2017-11-25 10:58:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/638172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shulik/pseuds/Shulik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of running stupid and young and thinking that Jackson was never going to let anyone close, of hoping desperately that it would be <i>him</i>, that it would be Danny who’d finally break through to him and waiting, year after year until Jackson’s eyes started to follow Lydia Martin out of the cafeteria, and one day Jackson had sat beside him and said in that horribly fake, disinterested tone of his that Lydia had the best grades in school, that she was genius level smart and did Danny ever notice that her hair smelled like wildflowers?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby I love you, why don't you tell me your name?

**Author's Note:**

> This is how I picture Danny and his sisters: http://shulik1.tumblr.com/post/40494226922 Alice on the left, fierce, warrior Alice and Lalani, beautiful, kind Lalani on the right.

Here’s the thing that people tend to forget about Danny when they talk about him.

Yeah, he’s on the lacrosse team, he’s a great goalie and he genuinely likes the sport despite coach Finstock’s increasingly more ridiculous training regimens.

He’s also one of the very few gay guys out at Beacon Hills High and the only one that’s somehow managed to retain his popularity once people started finding out about Danny liking dick.

For that, Danny probably has Jackson and his vicious, mostly douchey brand of loyalty to thank.

That’s why it’s understandable that people tend to forget about the fact that Danny is going head to head with Stiles and Lydia for valedictorian. He’s smart, generous and he’s also the only boy in a family of girls- all facts that the people around him tend to forget. Danny understands this in the face of just how superficial his high school tends to be.

Which is why Danny decides to give Jackson and the rest of the idiots he calls pack the time they need to figure out a way to tell him. He’s a nice guy, he can be patient and honestly? Sitting behind an oblivious Stiles and Scott in Chemistry is pretty much the highlight of his day after Brett or Rhett or what’s his name with the amazing abs breaks up with him.

It’s shocking just how clueless they are about their lack of subtlety and after a full year of listening to their various werewolf-related woes, Danny spends his time doodling little caricatures of Stiles and _Miguel_ , ahem Derek Hale doing a terrible, terrible impersonation of a real boy. He also texts his sisters about the latest developments in the pack’s love lives.

Danny has started a betting pool with his sisters about when Stiles will just man up and jump the older, clearly hot like _molting lava_ dude whose main hobby seems to be breaking into Stiles’ window at night and lurking outside the school like he’s never heard of statutory rape. Alice, who’s started her own bakery after coming back from college says that it’s Derek who will probably have to make the first move and Lalani, who’s just _dropped_ out of college and is now working in an herbalist’s shop the next town over just laughs and laughs. She’s not hardcore about her need to see Derek Hale taken and thus become something less of a temptation, she’s more into the whole ‘embarrass the hell out of Danny’ aspect of being a big sister but they still gossip with him.

They’re great, Alice and Lalani, funny, smart and sarcastic. Danny feels no shame in admitting that they’re his best friends outside of Jackson. Also, sometimes his sisters will do warding rituals to protect the idiots running around thinking they’re invincible.

What?

Just because Danny’s letting Jackson mature and be his own man and just generally staying out of it doesn’t mean he’s not going to keep tabs on him. So that’s what he does, Danny, sometimes when he’s standing in the hallways of Beacon Hills High and listening to Scott moan about the fact that he can now run across the lacrosse field without dying, Danny lurks and listens and feels generally like a creeper. Letting his best friend figure out a way to tell him _on his own time_ about the extremely important changes in his life, like, perhaps the furriness once a month and the new pack of leather wearing psychopaths who rampage across the school like blonde whirlwinds of doom, doesn’t mean that he’s going to let them do this thing on their own.

Without a little added protection.

Besides, Danny’s family’s _old blood_.

Born and raised on Hawaiian soil, generations and generations of Malehalanis going back, before the white settlers came. When their people followed their own gods and the tribe’s shamans, most of which were Malehalanis before they _had that name_ , would work their own brand of magic. Connected to the earth and the sky, using blood as a diving rod for answers- there’s generations and generations of _magic_ in him and just because Danny wasn’t born powerful doesn’t mean he still can’t do the small things.

Like help with the pack’s blessings, try to protect Jackson whose transformation had stalled Alice, stopped her from adding monksroot to a brew one night, pale, covered with sickly sweat before the bonfire that they had carefully stoked to a serious height in the backyard.

“He feels like a wolf,” Alice had said, dark eyes running molten with magic and _connection_ , “but there’s something blocking him.”

“What is it?” Lalani asked.

“I…” and the fire grew to impossible heights, the sense of _power_ radiating off Danny’s oldest sister doubled in sync with the flames. “I can’t _see_ him,” Alice frowned

Danny almost came clean, the night of the big game, when Jackson had been laid out in front of them. He’d whirled around, rage and terror brighter and more terrible than anything he’d ever felt before choking down, bitter, acrid and burning on his tongue. There had been nobody of the pack there, Scott and Isaac had disappeared and Stiles’ dad was screaming his name, searching desperately for him and there was nobody that Danny could take out his rage on.

Lalani had stepped in front of him, had placed a heavy hand on Danny’s shoulder and squeezed, tight and reassuring.

“We have to go,” she’d said, “we have to go _now_. Alice and mom are back at the house, we know what happened.”

And Danny wanted to throw her hand off, his sister’s steady presence the only thing that felt real in the mess of his head.

“Jackson,” his voice broke, his hands were shaking, “Jackson’s dead.”

“No,” Lalani shook her head, “but if we don’t go, we won’t be able to help him.” Up close, she smelled like cinnamon, like the shower gel their mom would buy in bulk and a little bit like the lighter fluid Alice used in her fires. Her eyes looked black in the darkness, it was as if she had been lit from within. His beautiful warrior sister who knew before even Danny did.

Danny threw one last glance over his shoulder before he followed her. Jackson’s body, god- only last week, the words would have meant something else, would have been an invitation to scorn Jackson’s leering jokes and to quietly, shamefully lock up in the darkest corner of his mind. Where things like Jackson’s real smiles lived, the times when he’d actually let himself be loose and vulnerable and his eyes would be bright, bright blue and Danny would think quietly, guiltily to himself that Jackson really _was_ everybody’s type.

Which is why when Jackson comes back, after Alice and Lalani and their mom spent the entire night chanting and Danny kept the rhythm going on the ancient drum, kept the beat close to his heart and let himself think of all the memories of their pasts and Jackson comes strolling back into the school, stupid douche scarf wrapped around his throat like nothing happened- Danny snaps.

He’d spend the night thinking of them.

Praying to whatever deity still listened to his family, talked about his best friend. Of running stupid and young and thinking that Jackson was never going to let anyone close, of hoping desperately that it would be _him_ , that it would be Danny who’d finally break through to him and waiting, year after year until Jackson’s eyes started to follow Lydia Martin out of the cafeteria, and one day Jackson had sat beside him and said in that horribly fake, disinterested tone of his that Lydia had the best grades in school, that she was genius level smart and did Danny ever notice that her hair smelled like wildflowers? Danny, who’d felt pretty proud of the A minus he’d managed to get in Harris’s class kept his eyes trained on his book and said that no, no he didn’t notice. He didn’t tell Jackson about the assignment, stayed quiet and listened to Jackson careful, controlled way of talking about Lydia and thought that was it, the moment when Jackson subconsciously slipped, let some of his mask crack and saw the light.

Saw somebody.

Saw Lydia.

Danny’s not a violent guy but it’s as if time’s slowed down, and the only thing that Danny’s marginally aware of before he has Jackson shoved against the locker, elbow pressed against his windpipe is the thudding of his heart. Like the drum from last night, it keeps rhythm in his ears.

Distantly a part of Danny notes that apparently Jackson has bright blue eyes as a wolf, Alice will know why, but most of him is too full of the previous night’s terror to really let himself breathe while Jackson’s only a second away from shifting completely.

“What the hell?” Jackson snarls into Danny’s face.

And huh, Danny’s not even surprised anymore to see that it’s Lydia who has her hand on Jackson’s arm, face stony as she keeps her back to the rest of the hallway, blocks Jackson’s face from the gawkers and keeps him from shifting fully.

“You have an anchor now? Something to keep the monster at bay?” Danny spits, bitter and for once, he can’t hide it. “What, she couldn’t have kept you on a leash all these years- you had to turn into a dog for her?”

Jackson blanches.

“Did you even ask yourself what happened?” Danny’s lips peel back in a sneer. It feels wrong on his face, twisting his features into an unrecognizable smirk. Into Jackson’s smirk. “Or was it one of the things that you take for granted? Huh? Turn miraculously back into a wolf from a killer lizard-? Why not, you’re _Jackson Whittemore_ \- everything goes right for you, ” Danny laughs at the expression on Jackson’s face, the dumbfounded way he’s got his jaw open.

At this angle, he almost looks ugly.

“Did you even ask yourself why you’re not dead right now?” Danny slams Jackson’s head against the lockers again and whatever limited resources of magic that he has, apparently they’re all on display right now. He’s holding Jackson, a new werewolf, with no problem.

“I should be dead,” Jackson says brokenly, the words twisting out of him in an ugly spill. “I know that, I’m sorry.”

Danny drops him, steps back and adjusts his backpack. “A blood sacrifice to appease the gods, a gift from the body willingly given for a soul no longer tethered to the flesh.”

He'd never even thought of hesitating last night, Danny, had stepped forward and grunted as the fire spread.

He hears the sharp inhale to his right, a quick intake of air from Isaac of all people.

“You can all smell it,” Danny says with a bitter rise of his eyebrows, a mocking curl to his lips, “I’m betting it doesn’t smell that appetizing.”

“What did you do?” Jackson sounds horrified. “Danny, what did you _do_?”

Danny shrugs. “What makes you think _I_ did something?”

It’s Isaac that speaks, slowly, watching Danny with those huge, trusting eyes of his. “You smell like burnt meat and blood,” he frowns, a small furrow between his brows that makes Danny’s hackles rise. “Danny, what happened?”

Isaac used to love Spiderman when they were little, and Matt had been obsessed with Wolverine and both of them would band together to make fun of Danny’s collection of Green Arrow merchandise. Isaac had been the first boy who’d held Danny’s hand, sticky fingers wrapped carefully around his and Danny had known, even then that he’d always choose Isaac’s blonde curls over Lydia Martin’s strawberry blonde ones.

“I’m sorry I listened to you,” Danny says, steps away from Jackson and Lydia who are _still_ holding hands, “I’m sorry I never called the cops on your father. I should have told someone.”

Isaac blanches pretty heavily and that’s when Stiles and Scott barrel through the doors. Stiles’ shirt is askew and Danny sees a hickey nestled in the hollow of Stiles’ throat as he passes him by. It blends in with the rest of his bruises.

Derek Hale’s a biter apparently.

Danny makes a note to tell Alice all about it.

“Where you going?” Scott’s plaintive voice follows him out the doors. Danny keeps going.

“Guys, where’s he going? Classes are about to start!”

 

+

 

He goes home, drops his backpack at the door and climbs the stairs. He stops at the entrance to his room, the unmade bed and the piles of homework that Jackson had left the last time he was here. He was already weird, detached and zoning and until last night- Danny would have bet the last of his money that his best friend would have told him about being a serial killing lizard, but sucker bets are hard to come by twice in a row.

“We’re in here,” Lalani’s voice comes drifting from the big room, the one that Alice had staked out when she’d moved back home.

Both his sisters are curled up in the bed, wearing brightly coloured pajamas and laying on their sides. Danny remembers growing up with the two of them, how they’d always gossip like that, laying there side by side like the only world that mattered was the one between the two of them.

“Danny?” Alice lifts her head up, worried and exhausted. Her short black bob looks like a rat nest, nothing like his usually fashion conscious sister would consider to be acceptable. The circles under her eyes look black, like bruising and she’s still trembling from the magic high.

Lalani can’t manage even that, she just turns to her side, smiles at him and says “come on, climb in.”

Somewhere out there, Jackson Whittemore has a new lease on life and he’ll probably never appreciate it.

“Aren’t I too old for that?” Danny’s already toeing his socks off though, moving towards the bed.

“Baby boy, you’ll never be too old for your big sisters-“ Alice runs a hand over his head, scratching his scalp the way he’s always liked, pulling him into their space.

Danny feels big and clumsy before his sisters pile on top of him, Lalani’s long tangled hair sweeping over his chest. They tangle their arms over each other, over Danny’s body, enveloping him in a cocoon of warmth and family, like being little all over again and feeling sure that his sisters would protect him from the whole world.

“This is nice,” Lalani says into his sweatshirt, rubbing her face into the fabric like a cat. “We haven’t done this in a while, I miss it.”

Alice hums contentedly from Danny’s other side.

They lay in silence before Danny speaks, his voice breaking- “does it ever get easier?”

Alice lifts her head up, watching him with narrowed eyes. “What?”

“Loving someone, does it ever stop?” he’s not ashamed of this, of being this close to his family but even Danny knows that being a gay teenage boy that likes to cuddle with his sisters will be entirely too much if he starts crying too. But he’s so angry, so damn furious and terrified, every time he closes his eyes all he can see is Jackson’s stupid face on the ground and his stupid face as Danny had slammed his head back and all he can do is breathe, in and out, and ask. Ask his sisters, they’ll know, because they were the ones who’d first learned how to love from their mother, the ones who passed it on to Danny and showed him that you didn’t have to be in love with someone to love them fiercely and loyally.

“Oh Danny,” Lalani lifts herself up above him, even though it looks like it’s killing her to move- “of course it doesn’t. It’s just, sometimes- you find someone that will love you just as hard as you love them and that makes it a little bit easier to carry.”

Danny can feel the lump in his throat, the hard weight of steel in the pit of his stomach all shatter at his sister’s words. The sound that comes out of his throat belongs to an animal, a wordless cry of pain and Danny curls into himself, lets himself break and trusts the two hearts beating on either side of him to put him back together.

 

+

 

Lydia’s the first one to corner him the next day at school. She’s never been one for avoiding confrontation, Lydia Martin and a little thing like werewolves and a recently resurrected ex-boyfriend are not about to start her now.

“I’m sorry,” she says sitting beside him in Physics, shooting a glare at poor Jenny Shroeder who’s relegated to finding another desk to sit at. “I didn’t know you were still in love with him.”

Her hair is in a fishtail braid and her makeup is flawless, she still smells like wildflowers but beneath it all- Lydia’s the girl who could have been Danny’s friend.

They’d both been part of the tristate delegation for the Science Olympics back in grade six, they’d sat together on the bus and Lydia had shared her fruit-roll ups with him and Danny had stood by her when they gave the medal to the other team. The one whose captain hadn’t argued for bioengineering as the way towards the future, the team who hadn’t raised a ruckus in a small California school. Danny knew Lydia before Jackson did, before Stiles could look past the fact that she was beautiful and smiled like she was hiding secrets. In a different world, in a thousand alternate universes, there are bound to be those where Danny had Lydia first, where Danny _wanted_ Lydia first and could forgive her for being smart enough to see Jackson looking back.

“I’m not in love with him,” Danny stares ahead, thinks of the worlds where he and Lydia would have taken the world by storm, would have won medals together, Lydia for being a genius with math and him for finally making up his mind, “not anymore.”

Lydia’s face clouds his vision, eyes hard and mouth in a thin line- “then what the hell was that about yesterday?”

Danny sighs, breaths deep and meets her gaze- “I’m just tired of always being the one that has to run after people. The one who’s left behind, by boyfriends, by my friends, by my _best friend_.”

Lydia’s eyes grow understanding, the hard line of her mouth softens a bit and Danny knows that she gets it.

“Listen,” he makes a decision, “do you want to come over to my house today? My sisters are going to have a cookout and my mom’s baking a cake. We can talk about,” he hesitates, “ _everything_ then.”

Lydia blinks.

Danny knows that he’s managed to startle her. It feels new, good.

“Just me?” Lydia asks slowly.

“Yeah,” Danny nods, swallows the lump in his throat and soldiers on- “I think just you for now. We’ll see what happens after.”

At lunch, Jackson and Lydia sit with Stiles and Scott, Isaac lounging indolently beside them, shooting Danny strange, indecipherable glances from beneath long lashes. Jackson tenses as soon as Danny walks through the door, goes still, ‘ _like a dog_ ’ the mean part of Danny’s mind supplies helpfully. Allison is sitting by herself, hair down and shoulders hunched, guilt rolling off her in thick waves.

If Danny was a better person he’d go and sit with her, try and joke about Finstock’s latest assignment, try and take her mind off the werewolves beside them. But Danny’s not that good of a guy, he thinks, not really, not when he can remember the psychotic look in Allison’s eyes when she had watched Boyd and Isaac from the bleachers, empty vindication and lies spinning complicated webs in her mind. And maybe he doesn’t know the whole story, but he knows enough and Lalani had held her breath as they’d walked past Allison and her dad in town once, had held Danny by the crook of his elbow, tight enough to bruise and only exhaled as they were gone, had told him to stay away from the Argents, told him that blood followed them, blood of the children of the earth, things steeped in magic like them. He doesn't go to her.

Danny meets Lydia’s gaze for a beat and she’s smiling at him, understanding and beautiful and in any other world, a world easier to bear and understand- him and Lydia would have been perfect. Danny nods at her before heading over to the lacrosse table, where the team’s sitting with their various hangers on and girlfriends, where expectations aren’t hanging in the balance and his best friend feels like a stranger. He smiles at Jack, bullshits his way through an unlikely explanation as to why he’s not sitting with Jackson and bites into a red apple. It tastes fresh, sweet and bright on his tongue.

“Why’s that douche Lahey staring at you?” one of the seniors leans over and nods across the room.

Isaac’s still slouched, the same lazy predator’s sprawl that Danny thinks most of the werewolves have perfected but on him, it looks somehow angelic, almost innocent. His eyes are bright blue and his eyebrow’s arched in question, faintly mocking, somehow inquisitive and when Danny smiles at him, something low and hot unfurling at the base of his spine- Isaac’s grin is like the universe unfolding. It feels like an answer.

There’s a tingle at his fingertips and cinnamon apples on his tongue.

Danny thinks that maybe he knows what the question has been all along.

He exhales. His chest feels clear.

+

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr! 
> 
> shulik1.


End file.
